V. I. Lenin

Everybody On Food And Transport Work!

Written:26 January, 1918First Published:Pravda No. 19, January 28, 1919; Published according 	
      to the manuscriptSource:Lenin’sCollected Works, 4th English Edition, 
      Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 Volume 28, pages 439-442Translated:Jim RiordanTranscription/HTML Markup:David Walters & Robert CymbalaOnline Version:V. I. Lenin Internet 
	ArchiveMay, 2002

I have already had occasion at the last session of
      the Central Executive Committee to point out that the next six
      months will be particularly difficult for the Soviet
      Re-public. During the first six months of 1918 we procured
      28,000,000 poods of grain, and during the second 67,000,000
      poods. The first six months of 1919 will be more difficult than
      the preceding.

The food shortage is growing more and more acute. Typhus is
    becoming an extremely serious menace. Heroic efforts are required,
    but what we are doing is far from enough.

Can we save the situation?

Certainly. The capture of Ufa and Orenburg, our victo-ries in
    the South and the success of the Soviet uprising in the Ukraine[1]open up very favourable prospects.

We are now in a position to procure far more grainthan is required for semi-starvation food rations.

Millions of poods of grain have already been delivered in the
    East. They are being held up by the bad state of the transport
    system. In the South, the liberation of the entire Voronezh
    Gubernia and part of the Don region from Krasnov’s Cossacks
    makes it fully possible to procure considerable quantities of
    grain, over and above our previous calculations. Finally, the
    grain surplus in the Ukraine is truly enormous, and the Soviet
    Government of the Ukraine is offering to help us.

Not only can we now obviate famine, but we can even fully
      satisfy the starving population of non-agricultural Russia.

The whole trouble lies in the bad state of transport and the
      tremendous shortage of food workers.

Every effort must be made and we must stir the mass of workers
    into action. We must definitely get out of the habitual, everyday
    rut of life and work. We must pull ourselves together. We must set
    about therevolutionary mobilisationof people for food
    and transport work. We mustnot confine ourselvesto
    “current” work, but go beyond its bounds and discover
    new methods of securing additional forces.

On the most “cautious” and even pessimistic
    estimate, we now have very weighty grounds for believing that a
    victory over famine and typhus in these six months (and such a
    victory isperfectlyfeasible) will lead to aradical
    improvementin the whole economic situation, for the
    es-tablishment of contact with the Ukraine and Tashkent removes
    the main and basic causes of the shortage and dearth of raw
    materials.

Of course, the hungry masses are exhausted, and that exhaustion
    is at times more than human strength can endure. But there is a
    way out, and renewed energy is undoubtedly possible, all the more
    since the growth of the proletarian ossi revolution all over the
    world is becoming increasingly apparent and promises a radical
    improvement in our foreign as well as our home affairs.

We must pull ourselves together.

Every Party organisation, every trade union, every group of
    organised workers, and even workers who are not organised but are
    anxious to “tackle” the famine-every group of Soviet
    workers and citizens generally must ask themselves the following
    questions:

What can we do to extend and intensify the national crusade
    against the famine?

Can we replace male labour by female labour and thus release
    more men for the difficult duties of transport and food work?

Can we provide commissars for the engine and carriage repair
    shops?

Can we provide rank-and-file workers for the food army?

Should we not assign every tenth or fifth man from our midst,
    from our-group, from our factory, etc., to the food army, or for
    exceptionally difficult and arduous work in the railway shops?

Are not some of us engaged in Soviet or other work which might
    be relaxed or even suspended altogether without undermining the
    main foundations of the state? Is it not our duty to mobilise such
    workers immediately for food and transport work?

Let as many people as possible go into action and deal one more
    blow to that accursed maxim of the old capital-ist society, a
    maxim which we have inherited from that society and which infects
    and spoils every one of us in one degree or another, the maxim
    “every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost". It
    is this heritage from predatory, sordid and bloody capitalism that
    is stifling us, crushing us, oppressing, ruining and frustrating
    us more than anything else. We cannot rid ourselves of this
    heritage at once. It must be fought incessantly; more than one
    cru-sade will have to be declared and conducted against it.

We can save the millions and tens of millions from fa-mine and
    typhus. Salvation is at hand. The famine and typhus crisis
    hovering over us can be vanquished, and vanquished completely. It
    would be absurd, foolish, shame-ful to give way to despair. To
    stampede pelimell, every man for himself, and each as he knows
    best, just to “get out of the fix” oneself somehow, to
    shove back the more feeble and push forward alone, would be to
    desert, to aban-don the sick and exhausted comrades and to make
    the over-all situation even worse.

We have created the firm foundation of a Red Army, which has
    nowforced its waythrough incredible difficulties,
    through the iron wall of the armies of the landowners and
    capitalists supported by the fabulously wealthy British and French
    multimillionaires, forced its way through to the principal sources
    of raw materials, to grain, cotton and coal. We created that
    foundation by working in a new way, by political propaganda at the
    front, by organising the Communists of our army, by the
    self-sacrificing organisation and struggle of the best of the
    workers.

We have gained a number of successes botli on the exter-nal,
    military front and on the home front, in the fight against the
    exploiters, against sabotage, and for the difficult, arduous,
    thorny butcorrectpath of socialist construction. We are
    on the verge of a complete and decisive victory both at home and
    on an international scale.

A little more effort, and we shall escape from the tenacious
    clutches of famine.

What we have done and are doing for the Red Army we must also
    do, and with redoubled energies, to step up, extend and intensify
    food and transport work. All our best workers must dothiswork. A place will be found for every-body who is
    anxious and able to work. Everybody who wishes can help to achieve
    an organised and mass victory over devastation and famine. Every
    active force, every talent, every speciality, every trade, every
    thoughtful individual can and must be found employment in thispeace armyof food and transport workers-a peace army
    which, to achieve complete victory, must now support the Red Army
    and consolidate and follow up its victories.

Everybody on food and transport work!

January 26, 1919

[1]In November-December 1918 the Ukrainian workers and peasants rose
      up against the German invaders and their stooge, Hetman
      Skeropadsky. On December 14 Skoropadsky fled from Kiev. On January 3,
      1919, the Red Army occupied Kharkov, and on February 5, Kiev,
      capital of the Ukraine.